Sperm bank offers Danish women to donate eggs for free vacations

Danish women can now get all-inclusive vacations for the price of donating their eggs. The world’s biggest sperm bank has established a foreign subsidiary, allowing it to bypass Danish laws. However, not everyone finds it a reason to celebrate.

The law currently prohibits the sale of eggs, something the
Copenhagen-based Cryos International Sperm Bank finds
“absurd” and “discriminatory,” Denmark’s
Jyllands-Posten newspaper reports.

The company has been lobbying for years to change the laws,
believing there isn’t “anything unethical” in its
proposal to send women on paid-for wellness trips in exchange for
their eggs. It also offers a compensation of 2,400 kroner (about
$360).

The process can be carried out either anonymously, or to help a
friend. According to the company, women could even choose to
simply store their eggs for the future, to be available for as
long as 15 years.

The practice of getting paid for your eggs has been around for
some time – other countries, such as Spain and Greece, already
engage in this sort of business, while Denmark’s neighbor,
Sweden, offers a more sizeable 9,000 kroner for the woman’s
troubles.

The offer of all-expenses-paid trips is Cryos’ latest wheeze. By
establishing subsidiaries in other EU countries, it gets to
circumvent Danish law. And the sum will again depend upon the
given fertility clinic; some destinations are reportedly offering
up to 11,000 kroner.

“I don’t see anything unethical in it. The Danish rules are
absurd and detrimental and on top of that it is discriminatory
that here [in Denmark] you can sell sperm but not eggs,”
Cryos head Ole Schou told Jyllands-Posten.

He says opening foreign subsidiaries was a forced move.

“We want to help the childless, but we are also a private
company and therefore we need to sell eggs in order to make
money. And if we can’t do it in Denmark, they we have to do it
somewhere else,” he says.

But not everyone is so sure. Some believe that motivating people
with paid vacations is not ethically sound when it comes to the
question of reproductive rights.

"It is an ethical discussion on whether one thinks that
making interventions in the body and sell various body parts to
be a business. We do not think that it should, and I think
clearly, this is about the ethical boundaries,” health
spokesperson for the Social Liberals party, Marlene Borst Hansen,
told the Danish paper.

She believes that the existing financial compensation for egg
donations is enough, and should be treated as compensation for
work – not as a material reward for the eggs.

"We stand behind the legislation we have in Denmark, because
we do not believe that egg donation must be a business. Of course
one must have a compensation if you have a sick day or two on the
basis of the interventions associated with donating eggs, but it
should not become a way to make money," Hansen said.

Denmark’s conservatives share this view. The party’s own health
spokesman, Daniel Rugholm, shares the view and adds that while
there is nothing illegal in the practice, it invariably ends up
“[luring] young girls who may not be well-off” into doing
something “so serious.”

Neither official sees sense in doing anything legislation-wise to
combat the practice, instead offering to appeal to the girls’ own
common sense, although Borst Hansen believes laws could in future
be implemented to prevent the practice from being advertised in
Denmark.